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Just over 20 years ago, I remember sitting in a class at Southern Illinois University, in a grad program then called “Telecommunications”, where the instructor discussed the eminent demise of the big three networks. Two decades on, of course, if the nets are dying it’s a surely a slow, slow death.

Just as the big Hollywood studios (or most of them, anyway) have survived their long-predicted ends to each celebrate 75, 80 or more years in business, I don’t see ABC, CBS or NBC going out of business anytime soon. Nor should they.

The Super Bowl was overshadowed again by its heavily hyped commercials, with advertisers paying about $2.6 million per ad this year in order to broadcast them to a large audience. While some ads are interesting, funny, weird, flashy or just stupid, they all serve as an example of what advertisers think will gather attention and money from consumers.

Like most people in Corporate America, back in my suit-guy days I attended my share of ‘change management’ seminars (corpo-speak for a half-day’s brainwashing on how getting schtupped by the boss is good for you). Invariably the session leader would make a statement about how the railroad companies lost out to the private automobile in the early 1900s because they couldn’t think outside box: they thought they were in the train business and didn’t realize that they were in transportation business, the refrain typically went.